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About this mod
Adds a burning effect and light to enemies killed by fire. ESPFE.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
With this mod, if an enemy dies while on fire, their body will remain on fire and cast a light for a little while. That's essentially it. If you'd prefer to have only the light or only the fire effect from this mod, these options are also available with the main download, packed as a FOMOD.
Here's what this looks like ingame:
Credit goes to gavwhittaker and samueljaybrown for the mod idea.
Installation
SPID or its VR version is a hard requirement. Theoretically a version of this mod could be made that does not require SPID, but I think this would involve either a less performant cloaking spell approach or patching for mod-added spells. If you'd like to have a try at anything like this, permissions are open.
This mod can be installed at any time. It should also be safe to change between SPID files in the FOMOD at any time. If you wish to deactivate this mod temporarily or permanently, the cleanest way to do so would be to simply delete the SPID ini and leave the plugin installed for the remainder of the save file.
Compatibility
This mod ought to work with very nearly everything else; no base-game records were edited.
Mod-added fire spells should generally* work out of the box, no patch needed.
*If they don't, it's probably because they either (1) don't have the MagicDamageFire keyword that spell effects need in order to work with things like this mod and perks that scale fire damage; or (2) do damage instantaneously / have a zero duration, which can slip under this mod's radar (because by the time the NPC finishes dying they are no longer technically affected by fire damage). I currently don't have a workaround for either of these situations apart from outright editing the other mod's spells.
Performance
This mod adds one script, which is responsible for adding the burning effect to an enemy after they are killed by fire. This script makes a single latent function call per enemy killed and should not remain attached to any body for longer than a second or two. All of the checking for when the script should proc is done by conditions instead. Currently I believe this is the most performant way to implement a mod like this. I would be happy to hear any suggestions for improving it.
In my testing, I didn't get any serious lag or other issues even when killing fifty enemies at once with the Fire Storm spell (beyond the normal frame drops from that many NPCs ragdolling at once). However I have tested it only on my machine, so please let me know if you encounter any problems.
Alternatives
If you use ENB lights, this mod will still work, but you might also consider options like ENB Light or ENB Lights for Effect Shaders (which are able to render more lights onscreen at once than the basic Skyrim way of doing lighting allows) alongside something like Frozen Electrocuted Combustion.
Known Limitations
Can you make a version where the effect is longer / the light is bigger / etc?
Here's what this looks like ingame:
Spoiler:
Show
Credit goes to gavwhittaker and samueljaybrown for the mod idea.
Installation
SPID or its VR version is a hard requirement. Theoretically a version of this mod could be made that does not require SPID, but I think this would involve either a less performant cloaking spell approach or patching for mod-added spells. If you'd like to have a try at anything like this, permissions are open.
This mod can be installed at any time. It should also be safe to change between SPID files in the FOMOD at any time. If you wish to deactivate this mod temporarily or permanently, the cleanest way to do so would be to simply delete the SPID ini and leave the plugin installed for the remainder of the save file.
Compatibility
This mod ought to work with very nearly everything else; no base-game records were edited.
Mod-added fire spells should generally* work out of the box, no patch needed.
*If they don't, it's probably because they either (1) don't have the MagicDamageFire keyword that spell effects need in order to work with things like this mod and perks that scale fire damage; or (2) do damage instantaneously / have a zero duration, which can slip under this mod's radar (because by the time the NPC finishes dying they are no longer technically affected by fire damage). I currently don't have a workaround for either of these situations apart from outright editing the other mod's spells.
Performance
This mod adds one script, which is responsible for adding the burning effect to an enemy after they are killed by fire. This script makes a single latent function call per enemy killed and should not remain attached to any body for longer than a second or two. All of the checking for when the script should proc is done by conditions instead. Currently I believe this is the most performant way to implement a mod like this. I would be happy to hear any suggestions for improving it.
In my testing, I didn't get any serious lag or other issues even when killing fifty enemies at once with the Fire Storm spell (beyond the normal frame drops from that many NPCs ragdolling at once). However I have tested it only on my machine, so please let me know if you encounter any problems.
Alternatives
If you use ENB lights, this mod will still work, but you might also consider options like ENB Light or ENB Lights for Effect Shaders (which are able to render more lights onscreen at once than the basic Skyrim way of doing lighting allows) alongside something like Frozen Electrocuted Combustion.
Known Limitations
Spoiler:
Show
Because of the light limit affecting Skyrim's rendering, it's possible you could see some flickering or weird lighting on large meshes when killing NPCs with fire, although I didn't find it very noticeable when I was testing. This is unavoidable as far as I'm aware. If anyone knows of a good trick to reduce it, I'm all ears. One possibility would be to use PlayImpactEffect alongside a hazard with a builtin total limit for attaching lights; I elected not to do this because I believe it would increase the script impact overall and Skyrim seems to be doing a decent job of choosing a sensible subset of the lights to render, even when a large number are present simultaneously.
It should be safe to use this mod alongside other mods which add their own effects to NPCs killed by fire, like Frozen Electrocuted Combustion. Possible there could be some visual weirdness if the other mod's fire effect uses a drastically different color or texture or if it applies its own lingering EffectShader (in which case this mod's shader might not show up properly). Either way nothing will break or crash, it'll just be a visual thing.
If you're using a spell or other effect that can under some conditions deal fire damage but doesn't always, it's likely that this mod will react as though it always does fire damage. I don't think this circumstance exists in the vanilla game, but it's possible for modded spells. This is because of intrinsic limitations in how HasMagicEffectKeyword functions.
It should be safe to use this mod alongside other mods which add their own effects to NPCs killed by fire, like Frozen Electrocuted Combustion. Possible there could be some visual weirdness if the other mod's fire effect uses a drastically different color or texture or if it applies its own lingering EffectShader (in which case this mod's shader might not show up properly). Either way nothing will break or crash, it'll just be a visual thing.
If you're using a spell or other effect that can under some conditions deal fire damage but doesn't always, it's likely that this mod will react as though it always does fire damage. I don't think this circumstance exists in the vanilla game, but it's possible for modded spells. This is because of intrinsic limitations in how HasMagicEffectKeyword functions.
Can you make a version where the effect is longer / the light is bigger / etc?
Spoiler:
Show
I don't plan to make alternative versions myself, but most small tweaks would be straightforward to do in xEdit yourself.
To modify the light, open up BodiesBurnBrightly.esp in xEdit and navigate to Light > __FireLightLight. In this block you can increase or decrease the radius value to affect the size, edit the RGB color of the light, or increase or decrease the fade value to affect the brightness of the light. These values are pretty safe to experiment with. Red, green, and blue color values each need to be in the 0-255 range.
To modify how long bodies burn, navigate to Spell > __FireLightSpellLightPlusFX / __FireLightSpellLightOnly / __FireLightSpellFXOnly (depending on the version of the mod you're using; LightPlusFX is the default). The duration value here (30 seconds by default) controls how long the visual effect lasts.
To modify the light, open up BodiesBurnBrightly.esp in xEdit and navigate to Light > __FireLightLight. In this block you can increase or decrease the radius value to affect the size, edit the RGB color of the light, or increase or decrease the fade value to affect the brightness of the light. These values are pretty safe to experiment with. Red, green, and blue color values each need to be in the 0-255 range.
To modify how long bodies burn, navigate to Spell > __FireLightSpellLightPlusFX / __FireLightSpellLightOnly / __FireLightSpellFXOnly (depending on the version of the mod you're using; LightPlusFX is the default). The duration value here (30 seconds by default) controls how long the visual effect lasts.